Sasikala Convicted. Now Focus on Governance

General Studies: II & IV

Topic: Electoral Reforms & Political Propriety

Publication: The Hindu; HT; IE; TT 

Sasikala Convicted. Now Focus on Governance

Why are we discussing this Issue?

Recently the Supreme Court of India brought an end to a two-decade-old disproportionate assets case filed against the late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, her aide VK Sasikala, Sudhakaran and Ilavarasi. The two-judge apex court bench convicted Sasikala and the two to four years in prison and Rs 10 crore each.

Main Message from this Issue:

The Supreme Court verdict is good news on many counts:

As Justice Amitava Roy wrote in his concurring order, “corruption is a vice of insatiable avarice for self-aggrandisement by the unscrupulous, taking unfair advantage of their power and authority.”

The most important is that it sends the message that the law will catch up with those who indulge in financial irregularities, no matter how powerful and politically well connected they are.

Questions raised by this judgement:

While there is no denying that the judgment has strengthened confidence in the justice delivery system, it is mystifying that the ruling has come more than eight months after the two-member Bench concluded hearing arguments in the case.

Suggestions for Improvement:

For AIADMK and Tamil Politics:

The crisis in the AIADMK presents itself as an opportunity for the party to shed its inheritance of leader-centric politics for a leadership that is more plural and decentralised.

The party’s founder, M.G. Ramachandran, and his successor, Jayalalithaa, built the party as an extension of their persona. They refused to groom a second line of leadership, which has contributed to the crisis the party has had to face after the death of MGR in 1987 and, Jayalalithaa in December last year. The present power struggle in the party could, in its best version, help push leaders from the grassroots to centrestage.

Until the emergence of the MGR phenomenon, electoral politics in Tamil Nadu was more a battle of ideas and ideologies and less a confrontation of leaders. But from the 1980s, state politics became a polarised battle between Jayalalithaa and DMK patriarch, M. Karunanidhi.

Political parties must look outside the tropes and leadership models of the past decades and embrace a more modern idiom capable of addressing new social and economic challenges facing the state.

Way Ahead

Now that the Supreme Court has given its order, it is time to focus on governance. But for that to happen, Governor C Vidyasagar Rao must end the political stalemate and administrative uncertainty in the state. He must appoint the leader of AIADMK’s legislature party as chief minister and ask him to face a floor test in the assembly.

Alternative View Point:

The democratically most apposite course is to hold fresh elections straight away, rather than to inflict on the people of Tamil Nadu the straggling legacy of a mandate whose legitimacy has been drained out of it by the Supreme Court ruling.

While that would be the right thing to do, it would fall foul of technical propriety, which demands, in the face of a live, elected House, to choose a chief minister from among the legislators. The governor should let the legislators do precisely that, without batting for the Centre.